TC Electronic is releasing the Mimiq Doubler, which offers “world first realistic guitar doubling” in a pedal format.

The Mimiq Doubler can add up to three additional guitar parts to your signal, resulting in the double, triple or quad tracked sound that is so central to rock and metal records. It’s designed primarily for the live arena, allowing you to recreate the fatness and depth of studio double tracking.

TC Electronic’s Mimiq Doubler achieves this result via an algorithm which recreates the subtle changes in pitch, timing and attack which occur when guitars are double tracked.

TC Electronic Mimiq Doubler available for $129.99

The Danish company is offering the true-bypass pedal for $129.99, although there’s no release date cited yet. See the official product page here.

TC Electronic has included a stereo I/O in the Mimiq Doubler, which opens up some interesting possibilities. Guitarists can set the double to be a simple left-right affair, or two tracks on each side. When two additional parts are active, you can send one to the left cab, one to the right and run the original part down the middle.

The Tightness knob controls how tight the doubling is. So whether you want Keith Richards or Metallica, you’re covered. The volume of the doubled parts is controlled by the Mix knob, while the original signal is controlled by the Dry knob. It’s an interesting set-up as many pedals combine that into a single function.

Mimiq Doubler suitable for live rig and studio work

As mentioned it’s primarily intended for live use, although the TC Electronic YouTube demos do indicate it sounds pretty good in the studio too. It doesn’t fully recreate the sound of real double tracked guitars, so I wouldn’t want to use it on an official release. Nonetheless, it could work in a pinch or on a demo when you don’t have the time to get double tracked parts down. The pedal seems to be more at home for metal and hard rock tones, as the second demo with overdriven tones on a Strat doesn’t sound quite as authentic.

It seems you can’t trust everything in the video however, as they claim that classic Metallica sound was achieved with rhythm quad tracking. James Hetfield has stated he used triple tracking on Master of Puppets. Even the Black Album wasn’t necessarily quad-tracked. There’s certainly many rhythm guitar layers but they reportedly achieved the sound by performing two guitar parts and running each part through four cabs and 10 microphones.